Syria and the Olympics: National Identity on an International Stage

ByAndrea L. Stanton

Introduction
Since becoming independent from French mandatory control in 1946, Syria has sent
athletes to every summer Olympic Games – with the exception of the 1956 Melbourne
Olympics, when it joined with neighbours Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon in a boycott to protest
foreign involvement in the Suez Crisis. A relatively small country – at 71,500 square
miles, it is larger than neighbours Jordan and Lebanon but smaller than Egypt, Iran, Iraq,
Saudi Arabia and even Oman and Yemen – Syria had as of June 2013 an estimated 22.5
million people, with roughly 90% Arabs and the rest Armenian, Kurdish and other
minorities, making it a mid-range country population-wise for the region. Religiously, the
country’s population is approximately 75% Sunni Muslim, 15% Shii (including Ismaili)
Muslims and Druze, 10% Christian, with a handful of Jews remaining from Syria’s
historical Jewish population.1 While Syria joined the Olympic community less than two
years after attaining independence, it was able to send only one athlete to the 1948 London
games: diver Zouheir Chourbagi, who placed 10th in the ﬁnal round of the 10-metre dive
and later worked for Syria’s Ministry of Education.2 Yet while Syria has consistently

t i , iversity of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

participated in the summer Olympic Games, it has taken home only three Olympic medals
since 1948: silver in 1984, gold in 1996 and bronze in 2004. This disconnect between the
country’s commitment to Olympic participation and its ‘return on investment’ with respect
to the number of medals won suggests that for Syria, as for many other smaller states
around the world, Olympic participation proved meaningful in other ways. (The relatively
greater medal counts of states with similar GDPs and populations sizes suggest that Syria’s
low medal count may also have reﬂected domestic factors, whether limited programme
funding, military dominance of sports training or insufﬁcient infrastructure – all subjects
worthy of investigation in future research.)

Joining the Olympic community in 1948 gave the newly independent Syria, with its weak
nationalist government, instant recognition from the global community of sovereign states.As
Syria matured and its government (and governing ideologies) shifted with the multiple coups
of the 1950s, culminating in the short-lived alliance with Egypt and ending with the 1963
Baathist coup, Syria’s involvement in international sporting events consistently reﬂected and
reinforced the country’s political positions. Known ofﬁcially as the SyrianArabRepublic, the
country’s secular, Arab socialist identity included the promotion of sports at the individual,
national, regional and international level as a way to construct strong, healthy, modern
citizens – a heritage that stretched back to the nationalist youth andmen’s organisations of the
Mandate era. While generally sending fewer than 20 athletes to any Olympic competition,3
the Baathist government’s secular ideology may be seen, for example, in its early and
consistent inclusion of male and female athletes from Christian and Muslim backgrounds in
Olympic cohorts – most notably Ghada Shouaa, an Arab Christian who won the gold medal
for the women’s heptathlon at the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, Georgia. It may also be
seen in the government’s emphasis on youth sports and physical education – with the latter
speciﬁcally mentioned in Syria’s constitution.4